


brief interviews with hideous men

by honey_wheeler



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after <i>Branch Wars</i>. Jim wants to join the Finer Things Club, while Pam’s starting to realize that Jim’s not as perfect as he seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brief interviews with hideous men

“Nice beret, Beesly. Or should I say Beesliére?”

“I prefer Pamalette,” she tells Jim. She tugs off the beret and drops it on top of the others. She’s got the berets, the Seurat poster, a baguette. All she needs are the champagne flutes. Jim trails after her like a hungry stray cat as she heads into the kitchen.

“What’s all this for?” he asks.

“Finer Things Club is tomorrow,” she says. She can reach two flutes, but the rest are pushed to the back of the top shelf. “Could you…?” He reaches over her head, easily snagging another two. It’s inarguably one of the perks of dating Jim: nothing is out of reach anymore.

“I only need one, thanks.”

“And the Finer Things Club would be what, exactly?” he asks as he puts the extra flute back and shuts the cupboard.

“Oh,” she says. “Right, we started it when you were gone.” She takes it from him and walks back into the living room, the first two flutes clinking together in her other hand. She tries to avoid “when you were gone” as a conversational topic. It seems a little like an emotional landmine, still, especially when there aren’t any coals to walk over first.

He makes an expectant gesture. She still hasn’t explained.

“It’s a club Oscar and Toby and I started. We read a book and then discuss it at lunch.” She brandishes the champagne glasses at him. “With culturally appropriate accessories.”

“I see, very interesting. Can I come?”

“No.” Her answer is immediate. Far too immediate, she sees, from the hurt look that flickers across his face, only to be replaced almost instantly by casual disinterest.

“Why not?” he asks, casually tracing a crack in the plaster of her living room wall with his fingertip, acting like he doesn’t really _care_ , he’s just _curious_.

 _Because you’ll be silly no matter how serious the rest of us are,_ she wants to say. _Because you only like things if they’re ironic and cool and I get to have one place where I can like things sincerely and be uncool about them. Because you don’t get to have all of me._

“Do you even read?” is what she says instead. “I mean besides ESPN Magazine and Dave Eggers articles on McSweeney’s.”

“I’ll have you know I have also read one of his books,” Jim says, pressing his hand over his heart like he’s mortally offended.

“You didn’t even finish it,” she points out.

“Objection, your honor, irrelevant.” He grins at her. She smiles back, but she’s even more sure than she was before: Jim and the Finer Things Club would be a bad match.

*****

“You couldn’t even read the book?” she says on the way to dinner.

“Come on, you’re not mad, are you?” He punches her shoulder, makes a cute Jim face. One that’s worked many, many times, she’s kind of annoyed to realize. “I tried to read it,” he continues. “It was really kind of depressing.”

“Whoa, stop the presses, a story about a family living in poverty is depressing?” she asks sarcastically. He mugs a little, and she wonders if he’s gotten so used to doing it for the cameras that he forgets not to when they aren’t around.

“You realize you proved everything they thought about you,” she tells him.

“Well,” he says. “I didn’t think you guys would take it so seriously.”

 _That’s the problem,_ she wants to say, but she doesn’t.

*****

“So what did Karen give you such a hard time for?” Pam asks later. “I mean, besides destroying her very expensive copier.”

They’re at her favorite Chinese place for dinner. Jim’s kind of terrible at chopsticks. Pam considers telling him that he wouldn’t be so bad at them if he’d come to their _Memoirs of a Geisha_ meeting and learned how to use them from Oscar who spent a semester in Japan when he was in college, but she contents herself with expertly picking up a chunk of Mongolian Beef while he fumbles with the Orange Chicken.

“I think she’s still pretty mad about how we broke up,” he says, frowning with concentration as he tries to corral some lo mein.

“How _did_ you break up?” Pam asks. She’s never asked before. She kind of didn’t want to know, especially after Karen cornered Jim in the break room after she got back from New York and yelled that he was a douchebag. It’s probably selfish, but Pam hadn’t wanted to spoil the new glow.

“I don’t know, I met her after the interview at that fountain in Union Square, you know the one?” She shakes her head. “It’s really cool, we should go sometime, there’s this-”

“Jim,” she interrupts.

“Right, sorry. Anyway, I told her I didn’t think it was working out, I wished her luck, and I came back here and asked you out.”

“You…left her by a fountain? Seriously?” Pam stares at him. She didn’t expect this.

“Yeah. She had friends in town, though. And I’m sure she stopped crying right after I left.”

“Crying,” Pam says. She keeps staring at him, her food forgotten, until he starts to fidget.

“Pam, it’s not like there’s a good way to break up with someone.”

“Yeah,” she says, setting down her chopsticks. “There _are_ bad ways, though, and that’s one of them. Wow, she must have been thrilled to see you today.”

“She was…” He casts around for a word. “I’m gonna say ‘unpleased’.”

“I can imagine,” Pam says with a laugh. “Wow. I don’t feel bad for you at _all_ anymore.”

“Not even a little bit?” he asks, making that Jim face yet again. She’s starting to wish he’d never make it again.

“You’ve got some growing up to do,” she tells him. “Maybe we should start with a coal walk.” He laughs like it’s a joke, but it’s not.

*****

The weather is still unseasonably warm. Every few days it gets nice enough to take a walk through the park downtown. She and Jim have taken to lunchtime strolls. They bring a packed lunch and eat their sandwiches watching the squirrels run around and fight over nuts.

“Let’s go throw a coin in the fountain and make a wish,” she says one day. He nods, so they head over to the fountain. There’s no water in it this time of year, but the bottom is still spangled with a few coins here and there. She imagines bums and shiftless teenagers include the fountain in their rounds.

Jim fishes a penny out of his pocket and hands it to her.

“A penny?” she asks. “Thanks for breaking open the vault, Scrooge McDuck.”

“If I’m going to subsidize bums, I’d rather do it directly,” he tells her, but all the same, he swaps out her penny for a quarter. She closes her eyes, makes a wish, and lightly chucks the coin underhand into the empty fountain. It bounces around a couple of times before rolling to a stop just in front of the statue. The wind picks up as she stands there, looking at it thoughtfully. Jim plunges his hands in his pockets and pushes the edges of his jacket closed with his fists.

“You ready?” he asks.

“Why, are you in a hurry to dump me and leave me here crying?” she asks.

“I guess I deserved that,” he says. He offers her his arm and they head back to the office, heads down against the wind.

 

  
_title from the book of the same name, by David Foster Wallace_   



End file.
